Weekend Reading #328

This is the three-hundredth-and-twenty-eighth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 16th August 2025.

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What we're thinking.

Despite market pushing once again to new highs, the week seemed rather uneventful. We remain on rotation watch. Some signs are there but nothing violent. Yet. To be honest there isn’t that much to say about markets this week other than they are still going up.

What we're reading.
This is a cheeky and excellent piece from Bob Pisani, a career CNBC reporter who recently retired. The title is “On assholes and how to deal with them” and it’s just gold. We can all identify with this. The question is who is the asshole?

There is a bit of a theme developing of how recent job losses are mostly college-educated men. The argument goes that AI is taking their jobs, and it is only beginning. There is already much resentment and anger amongst young men in society, aided and abetted by social media and macho podcasts of course. This could provide a recipe for bad times. This thread from Cem Karsan focuses on the US jobs market and how AI puts male jobs particularly at risk. Are we seeing the start of this already? He seems to think so. I’m not sure its so clear cut just yet but its certainly worth thinking about. DC

The Fed has in recent years become such an important determinant of the market’s mood – I remember during the COVID years wondering how FOMC meetings became such big things that everyone (including non-finance people) became a Fed watcher. These days the obsession with trying to interpret nuances from every word coming out of Fed Chair Powell’s mouth during the press conferences seems to have died down a little. Why? Maybe because everyone’s gone back to having a non-lockdown life. But potentially also because the Fed has spent years treading on political territory. This article that I came across on Twitter succinctly lays out the inconsistency of prior Fed policy and how they’ve not only become trapped by their own exceptions to their own rules, but have now been cornered by Trump into a situation where every move they make is likely to be branded as “political”. 

Somewhere at the top of my most-watched youtube clips is the famous Boardroom scene from Margin Call. And looking at the way the charts are going, there’s in all likelihood going to be some replays of that scene in real life in the not-so-distant future. Someone out there must’ve managed to assemble a bag of even MORE odorous excrement than the one assembled in 2008. This article in Vox that I came across by chance highlights an interesting point: that this scene (which I personally deem a classic) is an opinion splitter – between those who love it and those who cannot fathom how this is anything special. It turns out this genre of film even has a name for itself: halogencore. Basically white collar malfeasance thrillers. Looks like the to-watch list just expanded. EL

What we're watching.

When you think Keanu Reeves, it’s either the Matrix or John Wick that comes to mind. Always serious. But just like that sketch with Ricky Gervais helping Liam Neeson do comedy, when someone goes outside their comfort zone, some magic happens. So here’s Keanu Reeves playing an angel called Gabriel which – based on the trailer at least – is absolutely hilarious. EL

What we're listening to.

Whenever I need some clarity on global geopolitics my go to is George Friedman, who once again makes the stakes of Friday’s summit between Presidents Trump and Putin quite clear. His view has been that Russia and Putin in particular have shown themselves to be very weak. By not being able to take Ukraine, it has put military worries to bed. Putin knows the war is unwinnable and is facing a major crisis at home. He has failed and is unlikely to survive this in the end back home. His view is that Ukraine cannot win the war on its own, so it is almost irrelevant to be at the meeting and the Europeans have had plenty chance to be relevant but have failed to do so at every opportunity. This is about the US and Russia and what the future of their relationship looks like. The Europeans for all their noise will fall in line. Trump has been squeezing Russia economically and the fact that Putin is at the meeting is somewhat telling. Very much worth listening to this. DC